Gitmo News & Propaganda

Abstract: Peace talks between
the US and the Taliban broke down in March mainly because the Afghan insurgents refused
to agree to a deal by which guerrilla commanders released from Guantánamo Bay would remain
under Qatari government supervision in Doha, a senior US administration
official said.

The official said
contacts have continued between the Kabul government and Taliban
representatives, and that the US was also ready to resume talks.

Negotiations broke
down in March after a failure to agree the fate of five insurgents, including
three Taliban commanders, held in the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. In return,
an American soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, was to have been freed by a Taliban
affiliate, the Haqqani network, as part of a sequence of confidence-building
measures leading to a ceasefire and broader talks between Kabul and the
insurgency.

The collapse has been
widely blamed on resistance in the US Congress and the Pentagon to allowing any
Taliban prisoners to be released or transferred from Guantánamo. However, a
senior administration official insisted the Obama administration had been ready
to transfer the five prisoners to Qatar had the Taliban agreed to the
conditions in Doha. The transfer would have required a
"certification" from the defence secretary, Leon Panetta,
guaranteeing to Congress that the Guantánamo inmates would not re-enter the
fight against US troops.

"We had made a
very good arrangement with the Qataris that they would have been supervised but
not in jail. It would have been high-end. It would have been a heck of a lot
better than Guantánamo," the official said. "We worked our way quite
a long distance on this and I think if the Taliban had agreed to the final
couple of conditions on this I think we would have certified.

"As the
secretary of defence, you would want to certify that once these people were
transferred to Qatar they didn't leave Qatar – they didn't go back to Afghanistan or Pakistan or go to London
or go to conferences at Chatham House [a UK foreign policy thinktank]. Among
the things we said was that if they go to Qatar they have to stay in Qatar. And
they were not able to agree."

However, the American
official, in an unusually detailed account of the diplomatic effort, argued the
breakdown had been caused largely by internal rifts within the insurgency.

"We were asking
them some very hard questions they were having a difficult time answering. They
were having a hard time motivating their fighters at that time, who were
asking: why should people fight when some were in Doha talking to the United States?" the official said.
"We've said in public and private that we are interested in getting back
into that conversation, but that is up to them."

The direct contacts
began in November 2010 after nine years of war, in a safe house near Munich
provided by German intelligence, where US officials met Tayyab Agha, a
confidant of the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, in an encounter brokered by
German officials and the Qatari royal family.

Further rounds of
preliminary talks followed in Doha in February last year and again in Germany
three months later, leading to the establishment of a Taliban "political
office" in Doha at the beginning of this year. The talks in Doha focused
largely on the five Guantánamo detainees, who included three senior commanders:
Noorullah Noori, Mullah Fazel, and former interior minister Mullah Khairullah
Khairkhwa.

The administration
official said the Doha process had not been a total failure as the Taliban had
kept representatives in Doha who have had direct contact with the government of
Hamid Karzai, and had dispatched an official to a meeting in Kyoto in June also
attended by Masoom Stanekzai, a Karzai adviser who runs the Afghan high peace council.

With the collapse of
the talks in Doha, there is declining optimism in Washington over the prospects
of a deal before the end of 2014, when US and other Nato combat troops are due
to leave, leaving a residual force for training, counter-terrorism operations
aimed at al-Qaida, and possibly counter-narcotics operations.

Lieutenant General
David Barno, who commanded US and allied forces in Afghanistan from 2003 to
2005, said: "The Taliban may feel that they will be in a better bargaining
position after 2014 and they are prepared to fight on through the next two
years" (Guardian, 2012).

Title: Guantanamo
Prisoner's Opinion Of LeBron James Treated As Top Secret
Date: October 16, 2012
Source:Yahoo NewsAbstract: U.S. security restrictions governing the statements
of former CIA captives held at Guantanamo are so stringent that one prisoner's
assessment of basketball star LeBron James was treated as a top national secret
for two months, a military defense lawyer said on Tuesday.

The incident was
disclosed by Navy Lieutenant Commander Kevin Bogucki, a defense lawyer for
Yemeni defendant Ramzi Binalshibh, one of five prisoners charged with
orchestrating the September 11 plot to crash hijacked commercial planes into
U.S. buildings.

Bogucki said another
of his Guantanamo prisoner clients, former CIA captive Muhammed Rahim, wrote a
note criticizing the National Basketball Association star's decision to leave
the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat in 2010.

"LeBron James is
a very bad man. He should apologize to the city of Cleveland," Bogucki
quoted the note as saying.

Rahim has not been
charged with a crime but because he was previously held and interrogated by the
CIA, his communications are subject to restrictions similar to those of the
alleged September 11 plotters - every word they write or utter is presumed to
be "Top Secret" unless a government Security Classification Review
Team declares them safe for public release.

"It took that
classification authority approximately two months to determine that my client's
opinion of LeBron James did not pose a grievous threat to national
security," said Bogucki, who did not indicate when the note was written.

Defense lawyers say
the security restrictions are overbroad and impair their ability to prepare a
defense in a case that could end with their clients' execution.

The defendants,
including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the hijacked plane
attacks that killed 2,976 people in the United States in 2001, are charged in
the Guantanamo tribunal with conspiring with al Qaeda, attacking civilians and
civilian targets, murder in violation of the laws of war, destruction of
property, hijacking and terrorism.

Security restrictions
surrounding their trial are a key topic at a weeklong pretrial hearing this
week at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba.

CIA Interrogation
Prosecutors contend that the restrictions are necessary to protect U.S.
national security and safeguard CIA interrogation methods and sources.

The defense lawyers
say the CIA gave up control of that information when it disclosed those methods
and sources to the defendants, and that the restrictions are aimed at
preventing them from discussing treatment that amounted to torture.

Binalshibh and
defendant Walid bin Attash, a Yemeni raised in Saudi Arabia who is accused of
training two of the September 11 hijackers at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan,
were the only two defendants who showed up in the courtroom on Tuesday.

The judge, Army Colonel
James Pohl, ruled on Monday that attendance in court was voluntary during
pretrial hearings. Mohammed came to the court building but watched the
proceedings on a monitor from another room.

Defendants Ali Abdul
Aziz Ali, who is accused of providing money and travel assistance for the
hijackers, and Mustafa Ahmed al Hawsawi, who is accused of being a key
financial facilitator, stayed behind in their cells at a special high-security
camp that holds the former CIA prisoners.

The judge also heard
news organizations' request to limit closing of the courtroom when secret
information is discussed. Attorney David Schulz said the law requires that any
closures be narrowly tailored and can only occur if the judge finds that public
disclosure of the information in question would severely damage national
security.

"The public has
a constitutional right to know what is being done in its name at this
tribunal," said Schulz, who represents 14 news organizations, including
Reuters (Yahoo
News, 2012).

Abstract: The U.S. Navy is promising to clean up offices at the
Guantanamo Bay navy base that defense lawyers say are dangerously contaminated
with rat droppings and mold.

A Navy official told
the judge in the Sept. 11 war crimes tribunal on Thursday that a comprehensive
cleanup will be completed before the court reconvenes at the U.S. base in Cuba
next month. Capt. Michael Lebowitz said occupational health experts will ensure
the offices meet safety standards.

Attorneys for some of
the five prisoners charged in the Sept. 11 attacks have complained their
offices are so contaminated that lawyers and paralegal have repeatedly suffered
respiratory ailments. Some have required medical treatment at the tropical
base. The issue has repeatedly interrupted this week's pretrial hearing in the
Sept. 11 case (Fox
News, 2012).

The directives and
manuals, which for more than a decade directed the US military’s policy for
treatment of its detainees, will be released chronologically over the next
month, WikiLeaks said in a statement.

The first batch of
the documents released is the 2002 Camp Delta – Guantanamo Bay prison –
Standing Operating Procedure manuals.

“This document is of
significant historical importance. Guantanamo Bay has become the symbol for
systematized human rights abuse in the West with good reason,” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said.

Several of the
documents slated for publishing “can only be described as ’policies of
unaccountability,’” WikiLeaks said in its press release.

One document such
document that has been previewed but not yet published is the ’Policy on
Assigning Detainee Internment Serial Numbers’. Wikileaks claims it is a manual
on how to "disappear" sensitive prisoners "by systematically
holding off from assigning a prisoner record numbers".

Another apparently
contains the notorious instructions to "purge" interrogations tapes,
which became notorious following the Abu Ghraib torture scandals in the mid
2000s. WikiLeaks called on NGOs, activists and the general public to thoroughly
read the documents to gain a better understanding of the evolution of the
Pentagon's post-9/11 attitude towards prisoners (RT,
2012).

Abstract: The Democratic
chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence committee commissioned a federal report
to identify prison facilities in the U.S. that are suitable for housing
Guantanamo detainees, concluding the option is viable -- despite congressional
opposition to such a plan when the Obama administration proposed it.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein's renewed interest in
the proposal first came to light Wednesday after Fox News turned up an internal
Government Accountability Office document that refers to “Source of Work: Ms.
Dianne Feinstein, Chair, Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Senate” and
lists the “Gist of Work” as an investigation into whether domestic facilities
could house the approximately 170 detainees remaining at the controversial
facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Two hours after Fox News' inquiry about the
report, Feinstein's office posted the report online and released a
statement confirming that the California senator thinks the Obama
administration's controversial plan to relocate detainees to the United States
is a viable option.

“This report demonstrates that if the
political will exists, we could finally close Guantanamo without imperiling our
national security,” Feinstein said. “The GAO report makes clear that numerous
prisons exist inside the United States -- operated by both the Department of
Defense and the Department of Justice—capable of holding the 166 detainees who
remain at Guantanamo in an environment that meets the security requirements.”

Past discussion of moving the detainees
stateside sparked a firewall of bipartisan opposition in Congress, which passed
a measure barring that move.

The internal GAO document reviewed by Fox
News noted the president’s executive order of January 2009, in which he
promised to close the detention camps there within a year, and it referenced
“legal prohibitions” that currently bar the transfer of detainees to the U.S. But
the document also stated that Congress has continued to raise questions about
whether civilian or military facilities in the United Sates could house the
men.

“To address this, GAO is providing
information on the current characteristic of the detention facilities at
Guantanamo Bay, as well as descriptions of existing DOD (Defense Department),
Department of Justice, and Department of Homeland Security correctional and
detention facilities," it says.

The GAO's report on the facilities, which was
completed Nov. 14, included four objectives: an analysis of the current
Guantanamo Bay detention camps, examination of the extent Defense Department
and civilian facilities could be used, an outline of how the Justice and
Homeland Security departments manage individuals who “engage in
terrorist-related activities” and an overview of the challenges of housing
detainees in the U.S.

Congressional sources tell Fox News that
Feinstein, a California Democrat, placed a 30-day hold on the report, which has
the effect of limiting access to the report’s findings until its public
release. Until that time, sources say, Feinstein can share the findings with
whom she chooses. However her office disputed that characterization, saying
that it is standard for the GAO to delay public release of one of its reports
until after the requestor has reviewed it.

Republican Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia, who
heads the powerful subcommittee on appropriations overseeing the Justice
Department, said he thinks the department's acquisition last year of a
prison in Illinois was “unprecedented in its violations of longstanding
executive-legislative branch protocol."

It "could be the first step in
transferring the world’s most dangerous terrorists from Guantanamo Bay to the
U.S.,” Wolf said.

“Senator Feinstein’s request for this GAO
report raises even more suspicion about plans by the Obama administration to
transfer Guantanamo detainees to U.S. prisons, and even more troubling is the
fact that the report’s findings were kept secret from the Congress and the
American public,” Wolf said (Fox
News, 2012).

Title: London Protest Marks 11 Years Since Establishment Of
Guantanamo Bay Prison
Date: January 11, 2013
Source: Fox NewsAbstract: Dozens of activists
have staged a protest outside the U.S. Embassy in London to mark 11 years since
the opening of the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo.

About 50
protesters, some wearing orange jumpsuits and masks of President Barack Obama
or a dark sack around their heads, turned out for the peaceful demonstration in
central London.

The activists
called for the release of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident still held at
the prison. Aamer, originally from Saudi Arabia, was detained in Afghanistan in
2001 and has been held at Guantanamo since 2002. He has not been charged and
has insisted he was in Afghanistan to do voluntary work.

Obama
promised when he took office to close the prison but congressional opposition
has prevented him from fulfilling that vow (Fox News, 2013).

Abstract: A spokesman for the
Guantanamo Bay prison says guards used what he called "non-lethal
force" to quell a disturbance in a recreation yard.

Navy Capt. Robert Durand won't say what
measures were employed. And he won't confirm a lawyer's report that a guard
fired a shot at a prisoner, possibly using some type of non-lethal projectile
such as a rubber bullet.

The incident occurred Jan. 2 but the military
only disclosed it this week after attorney Clive Stafford Smith sent a letter
to the camp commander calling for an investigation.

Durand said Wednesday no detainees were
injured and a review by officials found guards followed procedures.

Smith says an Afghan prisoner was injured in
the throat, either struck by the projectile or from a ricochet (Fox
News, 2013).

Abstract: A flight headed
from Guantanamo Naval Air force Base to Andrews Air Force Base made an
emergency landing at Miami International Airport after a light indicator came
on.

Airport spokesman Marc Henderson says the
flight landed safely Friday just after noon with 144 on board, mostly U.S.
soldiers. Henderson says the passengers are out of the gate and waiting for a
later flight to the base in Maryland.

Messages left with federal aviation officials
were not immediately returned. No further details have been released (Fox
News, 2013).

Title: 'Gitmo Created More Terrorists Than We Could've Ever
Imagined'
Date: March 18, 2013
Source: RTAbstract: US Army Veteran
Brandon Neeley - a former guard at Guantanamo Bay - speaks out against the
abuses he witnessed at the prison, and lack of ongoing media attention given to
them. Neeley enlisted for five years in 2000, heading to Guantanamo in 2002.

Neeley tells
RT about violent incidents involving detainees, and expresses regret at his
former role as a guard, mourning the lack of consistent media attention on the
prison’s mistreated prisoners. He believes the hunger strike is now the
detainees’ only possible option in garnering international attention given
their plight - authorities have perpetually ignored their basic human rights.

RT:You were there over 10 years ago - how were detainees treated during
your time at the facility?

Brandon
Neeley: They were treated horrible. We were told
before we actually got to Guantanamo, that the Geneva Convention would not be
held in effect. The detainees, when they first arrived, they weren’t even
allowed to walk around in their cells -or cages, as I call them. They weren’t
allowed to pray, they weren’t allowed to do nothing. When the International Red
Cross came, some of the constraints loosened up and they were able to talk and
stuff. But I mean they were treated horrible. They were abused by us guards and
when it came to Internal Reaction Force team and…they were just mistreated all
around, especially in the beginning.

RT:Did you take part in that abuse – did you take part yourself?

BN: Yeah, I’ve always been very open about this. I was actually involved
in the very first incident that ever took place in Guantanamo. A detainee - an
older detainee has tried to jerk away from us and I slammed him facing to the
ground and held his face to the concrete until the Internal Reaction Force team
pulled us off. I’ve always been very open. I was involved in an incident and
witnessed more after that. In a nutshell, if I could do it again, I wouldn’t
take part in it, I would’ve spoken about it sooner than I did.

RT:Are detainees treated any differently now?

BN: From the outside looking in at it, it has changed. As far as PR, the
way the government tries to spin it, because the facility is a lot better. But
the guards that have been there over the last few years, the treatment inside
as far as the Internal Reaction Force team and the way the Koran is treated and
stuff like that - not much has changed. Maybe the outside has changed but the
inside has not changed too much.

RT:Does it surprise you that these detainees have gone on hunger
strike and are now threatening their own lives?

BN: No, not at all. It has been eleven years. A lot of these guys, a lot
of people forget that over half these people have been cleared for release, not
only by the Obama administration but also by the Bush administration.

The sad part in
all of this is, it’s really not covered in the mainstream media unless these
detainees do go on hunger strike, so this is really their only way to protest.

Just think
about it. They’ve just found out that the Obama administration has just got rid
of the only office that was attempting to close Guantanamo and they’ve just
publically announced that there is nothing in the works to send or repatriate
those people cleared for release. So this is their form of protest and this is
the only way they are getting any kind of media attention into Guantanamo,
which is the sad part.

RT:If they are released, would they not just be moved on to another
detention center? Would it make any difference to their future plight?

BN: A lot of them were cleared for release. They wanted to be sent to
other countries like Somalia- like former detainees who were cleared - they
were sent either back home or repatriated and sent to some other country to
live their life.

And the fact is that a lot of these people are sitting in limbo, they are
cleared for release. And they’re going to be indefinitely held for who knows
how long? They don’t know when they’ll see their families again or where
they’re going to go. I think the fact that they don’t know what is going
to happen is what makes them protest. And this is the only form of protest they
have – to go on hunger strike.

RT:Looking back at your time there, do you feel any regret, remorse,
guilt? Is this why you’re speaking out now about their conditions and what
happened there?

BN: I feel a lot of regret and remorse for what I took part in. The fact
is, I’ve never used the old say ‘I was just following orders.’ I’m guilty of
what I’m guilty of. And the fact is that when whoever opened the camp decided
to open Guantanamo , they knew from the go that it was wrong, it was illegal
and it was a violation of human rights, and the fact is that it needs to be
closed.

Detainees in
orange jumpsuits sit in a holding area under the watchful eyes of military
police during in-processing to the temporary detention facility at Camp X-Ray
of Naval Base Guantanamo Bay in this January 11, 2002 file photograph.
(Reuters/Stringer/Files)

I’ve tried to
take something very negative in my life and tried to turn it into something
positive and do some good. And hopefully by coming forward – by a lot of us
that have come forward, you know- we put a lot of risk by coming forward - that
it does make a difference.

And hopefully
eventually Guantanamo will be closed and a lot of these detainees can go home
and the guilty ones can be tried and sentenced…

RT:Do you think you’re helping this, because this case has not been
covered a lot in mainstream media (Something you touched on a little bit
earlier)? Do you think people are listening?

BN: I think it depends. I really believe that if we had a Republican
president it would be a lot more in the mainstream media. The issue of
Guantanamo goes through flurries where it would be real hot around the
anniversary and everyone wants to talk about it or if somebody dies they want to
talk about it. You know, at the beginning there was a lot of media attention
once some of it did become public but it has kind of died down. I think a lot
of it is that government is very good at spinning it, making it look like a
straight place.

RT:What is the alternative though – if you have terror suspects or
people who are charged with atrocities, is there an alternative to something
like Guantanamo? Isn’t the world a safer place for it?

BN: No. I really believe Guantanamo has created more true terrorists
around the world then we’ve gotten rid of. The fact is that we’ve held a lot of
innocent people there and the fact is there are truly guilty people there that
need to be dealt with. But we have a federal court system that has proven time
and time over that we can try true terrorists and sentence them to whether it’s
you know by death or life imprisonment in super max prison.

The US flag
flies over the war crimes courtroom in Camp Justice in this photo taken at the
US Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba on October 18, 2012 in this photo
reviewed by the US Department of Defense. (AFP Photo)

The fact is
the military commission is a kangaroo court – a lot of the stuff they went
over, the federal court system has already rules intact for. They’ve spent a
whole week under…well, once Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he was allowed to wear
camouflage. You know federal court has rules of what you’re allowed to wear or
not wear in a courts system. It is a mockery.

The fact is
they’ll never bring him into a federal court system because a lot of the
information they have gotten has been gotten under the use of torture, so it is
inadmissible in federal courts system.

But we’ve
dropped the ball. We have a system here. We have an opportunity to show the
world that our system and our way of life actually works. But we dropped the
ball we’ve created more terrorist and enemies around the world than we could
have ever imagined (RT, 2013).